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What Trey Lance’s final college game tells us about his NFL future

Trey Lance might be a top-10 pick in the 2021 draft, but what will his NFL team be getting to start? Central Arkansas gave an NFL preview.

When evaluating quarterbacks, it’s just as important — if not more important — to figure out how they deal with adversity as opposed to watching a bunch of highlights and going with all the good stuff. Especially in the transition from the NCAA to the NFL, it doesn’t matter how great the quarterback in question is; at some point, the NFL will take his lunch money and make him look like the rookie he is.

In the case of North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance, who completed 192 of 287 passes for 2,786 yards, 28 touchdowns, and no interceptions in his one full season in 2019, that particular evaluative opportunity came on October 3, 2020, when the Bison played their only game of the fall season due to COVID concerns. In that game, Lance completed 15 of 30 passes for 149 yards, two touchdowns, and the only interception he threw in his collegiate career. While he also ran 15 times for 143 yards and two touchdowns — and proved his “quarterback who plays like a linebacker” mentality…

…he also presented concerns for those who had already punched his ticket as a top-15 draft pick, and perhaps also provided confirmation for those who were more hesitant about his professional future.

While Lance was balky and frenetic at times, it wasn’t all on him. The Central Arkansas Bears managed to show Lance a lot of the stuff he’s going to see in the NFL — coverage switches from pre-snap to post-snap, match coverage over the middle, aggressive converging coverage outside, and blitz looks that forced him to alter his protection calls. It was a game plan not unlike what you’d see from, say, Buccaneers defensive coordinator Todd Bowles on a week-to-week basis.

Bison associate head coach and quarterbacks coach Randy Hedberg said this past week that Lance was responsible for calling a lot of the protections and adjusting to blitzes at the line of scrimmage, and in this game, it didn’t always work. When you have seven-on-six, you’d better get the ball out of your hand more quickly than this. Especially when you’re facing blitz as much as Lance did — per Pro Football Focus, he was blitzed on 20 of his 34 dropbacks. Now, he did complete 10 of 16 passes for 113 yards and both of his touchdowns against the blitz, but he also threw that lone interception in that particular circumstance.

Lance seemed especially jittery on throws to the middle of the field, and this deep throw with less than a minute left in the first half was almost an interception. Overall, Lance attempted six throws of 20 or more air yards, most were over the middle, none were completed, and by my count, two were one step away from being intercepted.

Lance’s actual interception came with 11:15 left in the third quarter, and here’s how he explained it to me on Friday in his Zoom media availability after his pro day:

“The pick? It was play-action, and I was just late. It was slap seam, with a tight end wheel coming behind it, and I was just late on it. That’s all that happened. I saw the safety and tried to pull the trigger just one or two seconds too late.”

It was a mystifying decision, because there are other examples of Lance not only discerning safety placement, but looking safeties off to get the throw he wants.

Lance did have the Bison ahead 32-28 late in the game; he threw a 23-yard touchdown pass to fullback Hunter Luepke with 7:35 remaining off a coverage bust, and then, with just over three minutes left in the game, he made his most crucial throw — a great 15-yard out to receiver Braylon Henderson that preserved the drive and eventually led to a 13-yard Luepke touchdown run which put the game away with a 39-28 final. As much as he struggled at times to get his game together, it was impressive to see him with the right kind of short-term amnesia, and the ability to make the tough throw at the end of a difficult outing.

“As far as the deep out — we call that a “circus” route, and [Henderson] got free access with one-on-one man coverage, and I’m betting on my guy to win every single time,” Lance recalled. “He made a great catch on that, as well.”

So, a mixed bag, which is likely what Lance will provide at first when he hits the next level, because the next level has a tendency to hit back. There’s no question that Lance has all the attributes you want in a modern NFL quarterback, but as this game showed, there are also things he needs to develop before we go about crowning him to any significant degree.

Could North Dakota State QB Trey Lance be the next Steve McNair?

If you remember Steve McNair, and you’ve watched North Dakota State quarterback Trey Lance, you could be struck by the similarities.

In his one full season (2019) with the North Dakota State Bison, quarterback Trey Lance completed 192 of 287 passes for 2,798 yards, 28 touchdowns, and no interceptions (no, that’s not a typo. 28 touchdowns and no interceptions). On passes of 20 or more air yards, he completed 20 of 53 passes for 807 yards, 12 touchdowns, and no interceptions. On intermediate throws (10-19 yards), Lance completed 44 of 78 for 784 yards, eight touchdowns, and no interceptions. And on short throws (0-9 air yards), Lance completed 90 of 106 passes for 872 yards, four touchdowns, and no interceptions.

Lance excelled at every level in 2019, and though he found things more difficult in his one 2020 game against Central Arkansas, where he completed 15 of 30 passes for 149 yards, two touchdowns, and his one collegiate interception, he also made big-time throws in that game, mitigating any damage to some degree.

NFL comparisons have come thick and fast, as is always the case with quarterbacks transitioning to the next level. Lance has been compared to Dak Prescott, Andrew Luck, Deshaun Watson, and “Taysom Hill with arm talent” (thank you, PFF Draft Guide, for that bit of hilarity).

When asked on a recent conference call which quarterback he’d want between Lance, Ohio State’s Justin Fields, and 2020 Philadelphia Eagles rookie Jalen Hurts, NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah made the Lance comparison I hadn’t heard or thought of before, but made total sense from then on. It’s the Lance comparison to end all Lance comparisons: Steve McNair, the Alcorn State alum who completed 2,733 passes in 4,544 attempts for 31,304 yards, 174 touchdowns, 119 interceptions, a career quarterback rating of 82.8, a 2003 NFL Most Valuable Player award (co-MVP with Peyton Manning), and an agonizing Super Bowl XXXIV in which McNair’s Titans were one yard away from tying the game late. I recently ranked McNair as the ninth-best player in NFL history who came from historically Black colleges and universities, and his induction in anybody’s top 10 would be tough to argue.

“I would say the highest ceiling would be Justin Fields just because his speed and athleticism — Trey Lance is a great runner and I think Trey Lance is probably going to run in the high 4.5s, which is incredible; and Jalen Hurts is a really good runner,” Jeremiah said. “But Justin Fields can be a home run hitter as a runner. Just his speed makes him a little different there. You look at all three of those guys, they] have strong arms. Trey Lance, he reminds me of Steve McNair. I was around McNair late in his career with the Ravens and  just the physicality that he plays with, the toughness — he’s got a little room to grow in terms of just pure accuracy, but man, I think those two guys are really, really interesting.

“I think Trey Lance and Justin Fields is kind of a toss-up.”

So, if you’re getting ready to ding Lance out of the gate because his primary opposition came against Eastern Washington and Delaware instead of Clemson and Alabama, consider that some who are in the business of isolating the quarterback regardless of the circumstance wouldn’t put a thin piece of paper between Lance and Fields.

One way in which the strength of competition issue comes up is the insistence that Lance did his thing against outmatched defenses that couldn’t force him to make the kinds of tight-window throws the NFL requires.

Well… the tape tells a different story. Markedly so.

And if you’re of the opinion that Lance can’t handle the processing the NFL requires… well, there’s quite a bit of proof in the opposite direction there, as well.

The McNair comparison is interesting and instructive. Both McNair and Lance were given offers by bigger schools to play defensive back, and bet on themselves at their preferred position. Both had questions about their abilities to transition to the NFL by virtue of everything from strength of schedule to the transitional value of their offensive systems. And McNair certainly had the toughness and acumen to transcend the doubters.

McNair also brought that defensive mentality to his position — one could say that he played quarterback like a linebacker at times, and as North Dakota State quarterbacks coach Randy Hedberg said this week, Lance — who played safety in high school for his father — certainly has the same mindset.

“I said this myself, probably in his second year — that Trey did have the mindset of playing like a defensive player. I think that’s his mentality. I really believe that. I saw him play a high-school game his senior year, and he was playing safety, and he’s coached by his dad. His dad was his secondary coach in high school. He came up and made a tackle, and it was a pretty physical tackle. I said after the game that I thought he would have been ejected from the game if it was a college game, but the high-school rules didn’t pertain as much to him as the college rules would have. But I do think that he plays with that defensive mentality. He’s a very physical player. I’m not sure if he can play that way at the next level with that mindset, but I do think he has that kind of mindset going into a game.”

In an October, 1994 article on McNair written by Don Pierson of the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Bears scout Jim Parmer, Jake Hallum, a scout for the National Combine, and Carroll Hardy, a scout for the Shreveport Pirates of the Canadian Football League, sat in a room and watched six straight hours of McNair’s college tape. The comments from the three scouts were a virtual superimposition of what you might see people say about Lance at this point.

“Looks like he’s a little careless here.”

“Got a little burst.”

“His position coach must have ulcers as many chances as he takes.”

“Riverboat gambler, but he gets them there.”

“Good scrambler, but he’s not scrambling against Michigan.”

“Drops all right.”

“Quick arm.”

“Awful strong. Stands flat-footed on this one and flips it and still puts a little something on it.”

“Never happy feet. His movement in the pocket is darn near amazing,”

In the end, people around the league appreciated McNair’s poise under pressure, and dismissed the perfunctory speculation that he wasn’t a genius at the whiteboard or under center — criticism that far too many Black quarterbacks have had to face throughout the decades with no actual proof to them. And in the end, it worked out pretty well.

Lance’s offenses weren’t like McNair’s — North Dakota State wasn’t running four-wide all the time, which in McNair’s case worked out at the NFL level in many ways…

…but when you ask Randy Hedberg about Lance’s processing requirements and abilities (Hedberg also coached Carson Wentz in Wentz’s last two seasons with the Bison), you get a good sense of how much Lance was asked to do.

“Our offense puts a lot of emphasis on the quarterback processing at the line of scrimmage with protections,” Hedberg said, mentioning that he did the same for Carson Wentz. “They have an option to set the protections more often than not, and then they have the option of changing protections also. But they also have we have a “kill” system and a “maybe” system, which gets him into run/pass, pass-to-run, run-to-pass, whatever it is based on different alignments of the defense. So that’s part of our game also which I think the quarterbacks are really good at, but it’s no different.”

As far as the experience, Lance’s 17 games matches the number of games both Kyler Murray and Mac Jones started in college, and Cam Newton had just 14 starts at the major college level. Hedberg said that some NFL decision-makers have expressed concern about the idea that Lance has seen enough defensive “pictures” he might see at the NFL level, but you could say the same of a lot of quarterbacks who eventually make it at the highest possible level.

As for Trey Lance and NFL comparisons, he wasn’t really biting on that during a Zoom media availability after his Friday pro day in which he showed a less-elongated throwing motion, and better front foot placement.

“A lot of teams have said a lot of different guys, and everyone’s an analyst on Twitter,” he said. “Everyone can have their own comparison, or whatever it is. I like to take a lot of pieces from a lot of  guys’ games, but in the end, I’m Trey Lance and nobody else.”

I did follow up with the McNair comparison, and the one Hedberg made — Deshaun Watson.

“I think both of those players are great players to be compared to, at the end of the day. Obviously, they’ve both done what I want to do in the National Football League, and obviously, Deshaun’s still doing what I want to do. Just the type of people… especially Deshaun, and the way he carries himself off the field — he’s a mentor for me. Thankfully, I have plenty of guys in the league right now who are willing to answer my questions and talk to me.”

One may wonder if Lance, who was seven years old when McNair played his last game in 2007, has ever seen his predecessor. If not, it might represent an interesting viewing… and perhaps, a mirror image.